Jane Kenyon: A Literary Life

by John H. Timmerman

In Jane A Literary Life, Timmerman limns the story of Kenyon's life, drawing on unpublished journals and papers of hers and recollections by her husband, the poet Donald Hall. To show how her art grew out of her life Timmerman proceeds to explore, volume by volume, the form and substance of Kenyon's work.

Genres: Poetry, Biography Memoir, Biography

208 pages, Hardcover

First published August 31, 2002

Reviews

[Becka the Book Girl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Drawing on unpublished journals and papers, interviews, and recollections from her husband, as well as her published volumes, John H. Timmerman presents a thoughtfully crafted biography of poet Jane Kenyon. In addition to sharing her personal history, he traces the development of her writing style and offers insightful analysis of both the writing process and the actual wording of a number of her best-known pieces from earliest drafts to final published versions.

Timmerman also includes accurate information about depressive illness and an empathic view of how it impacted Kenyon’s work. He examines her affinity for the natural world, her strong ties to her physical surroundings, her struggles with both psychological and physical disease, and her spiritual searchings through the lens of her poetry. Finally, Timmerman shares glimpses into the relationships that shaped and sustained Kenyon: her long marriage to fellow-poet Donald Hall, and the writing community made up of herself, Alice Mattison, and Joyce Peseroff.

I usually encounter a poet the other way round – first reading the poems and then, if they resonate with me, finding out more about the person behind them. In this case, however, this biography with its delicate balance of attention to both the poet and her work has given me an excellent foundation for reading Kenyon’s poems with a deeper understanding than I would ordinarily have had this early in my experience with them.

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The life Jane Kenyon, and specifically her darkness of depression, are the focus of Timmerman's biography and literary analysis. The author explores the various techniques the poet used to express her spirituality and her love for the farm on which she and Donald Hall ( a former US Poet Laureate) lived in New Hampshire. Kenyon lived there from 1975 until her death from leukemia in 1995. Copious footnotes permitted this reader to make a list of Kenyon's volumes for further exploration. Indeed, this book is much like taking a trip to new territory with an expert guide, and then returning to the same spot later on one's own. The closing chapter focuses upon Hall's struggle to live without her and is surprisingly powerful.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I did. There are some lovely readings of certain poems, and a very helpful draft by draft analysis of "Let Evening Come." It did feel like a bit of a peep show at times, though. Still the first critical biography of a poet is one of the essential things for preserving a reputation. Work on Kenyon in the future will start here. I talked about it some in a review/essay you can link to here

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text...

[Piet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Een toegankelijke en tegelijk diepgravende bespreking van het werk van de jong overleden Amerikaanse dichteres (1947-1995). Omdat haar werk sterk biografisch is, komen we ook in dit boek veel aan de weet over haar levensloop. Depressies en liefde voor de natuur vormen de brandpunten waar omheen haar werk is gevormd. Timmerman bespreekt bundel voor bundel en vaak gedicht na gedicht. Saai? Nee, ik greep telkens naar de gedichten zelf en begrepe ze beter.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because I love Kenyon's poetry, I was delighted to find a book that gave me more information about her and her poetry. This short biography adds a depth to the poems that we don't necessarily have access to just from the poem itself. "The Needle," for example, was written when Kenyon was a student and was the poem that led to acceptance into Donald Hall's poetry class at the University of Michigan.

The one place that I think needs more exploration and explanation is related to the conflict that she had with one of her best friends and member of her writing group. Though the two made up, Kenyon did not want her poem, "Woman, Why are you Weeping," to be published as a result of this painful conflict. It was only published posthumously after careful deliberation by her husband and her writing group.

Timmerman's discussion of what this conflict was about was not convincing to me. Timmerman explored Kenyon's spirituality and notes that her perceptive pastor gave her Christian mystics to read. My hunch is that Kenyon had a mystical experience in India and that she had trouble articulating it to her friend. It is not unusual for those who have this type of contact with an Eastern religion to "go on and on," as Kenyon did, about the person who was the catalyst, but it was exactly that "going on and on" about someone that made her friend jealous and mad.

It is the nature of the experience that Kenyon had in India that I think is the key to unraveling this mystery. The information might be available in her journals--or in the poem, if one looks closely.